Tim Cook to return to All Things D conference in May

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been confirmed to appear at the D11: All Things Digital conference in May, following up on his debut in 2012 by kicking off this year's proceedings with an opening night interview.

As noted by AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, Cook gave his first major interview at D10 last year after taking over the reigns from late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. The Apple executive is expected to again be one of the highlights of the event.

"There?s lots to talk about, from the explosive growth of the mobile market to intense competition from a range of rivals, most especially Google?s Android, as well as innovative offerings from Korea?s Samsung," Swisher wrote. "It will also be interesting to talk about the changes at Apple under Cook?s leadership, who took over from the late co-founder and industry legend Steve Jobs, as well inquiring about what new products are in the pipeline and how the company is faring in an increasingly high-pressure market."

Last year, Cook discussed plans to "double down" on secrecy, products like Siri voice control and how America-built Apple products.

D11 is scheduled to run from May 28 to30, with other tech moguls like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Motorola Mobility?s Dennis Woodside, Pinterest?s Ben Silbermann, Android head Sundar Pichai and Sony?s Kaz Hirai, among others, slated for interviews.

Tickets to the event have been sold out for months, but AppleInsider will be offering coverage of the conference at the end of May.

I know I'll take grief for saying this, but it must be said. It seems like, every time Cook has made public comments, the stock has dropped. Without any further clarity or insight provide about Apple and where it's headed (other than some standard platitudes).

@anantksundaram
Let's leave the stock market out of this discussion. Besides, how do you explain that suddenly AAPL shares went up from $394 to $442 in just a few days? Wall street speculation, has got nothing to do with reality.
I, as a customer, am very optimistic about Apple. They, IMO, have the greatest eco-system today. Macs, with iPods, iPhones, iPads and Apple TV's work beautifully together. Not perfect, but no other company has come even close to integrating all these services together.
If one day Apple does release an TV, it'll be because they have something better to offer. Not just a bunch of specs glued together.
I for one, want to hear what Tim has to say, although I doubt, he'll be giving any details on upcoming products.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been confirmed to appear at the D11: All Things Digital conference in May, following up on his debut in 2012 by kicking off this year's proceedings with an opening night interview.

As noted by AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, Cook gave his first major interview at D10 last year after taking over the reigns from late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. The Apple executive is expected to again be one of the highlights of the event.

"There?s lots to talk about, from the explosive growth of the mobile market to intense competition from a range of rivals, most especially Google?s Android, as well as innovative offerings from Korea?s Samsung," Swisher wrote. "It will also be interesting to talk about the changes at Apple under Cook?s leadership, who took over from the late co-founder and industry legend Steve Jobs, as well inquiring about what new products are in the pipeline and how the company is faring in an increasingly high-pressure market."

Last year, Cook discussed plans to "double down" on secrecy, products like Siri voice control and how America-built Apple products.

D11 is scheduled to run from May 28 to30, with other tech moguls like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Motorola Mobility?s Dennis Woodside, Pinterest?s Ben Silbermann, Android head Sundar Pichai and Sony?s Kaz Hirai, among others, slated for interviews.

Tickets to the event have been sold out for months, but AppleInsider will be offering coverage of the conference at the end of May.

2) You ignored my second point altogetger. Jobs was always quite amazing at creating excitement about Apple's future, and in providing a brilliant, high-level framework to think about the future in these types of forums. Cook is good, but the comparison is not close.

Because I'm not going to refute it. Tim has a deep passion for his work, but it's a passion that can't be expressed in the same way as Steve's. He's not dull, like some claim, but he's not Steve. There's no questioning that.

@anantksundaram
Let's leave the stock market out of this discussion. Besides, how do you explain that suddenly AAPL shares went up from $394 to $442 in just a few days? Wall street speculation, has got nothing to do with reality.
I, as a customer, am very optimistic about Apple. They, IMO, have the greatest eco-system today. Macs, with iPods, iPhones, iPads and Apple TV's work beautifully together. Not perfect, but no other company has come even close to integrating all these services together.
If one day Apple does release an TV, it'll be because they have something better to offer. Not just a bunch of specs glued together.
I for one, want to hear what Tim has to say, although I doubt, he'll be giving any details on upcoming products.

I don't at all disagree that one should be optimistic about Apple. I am quite optimistic (as both a customer and as a shareholder).

The problem is the "vision" thing. Cook has not yet laid out a vision for Apple. He has not yet laid out a framework to drive thinking about the industry and where it's headed. One would have thought that, given his many years of apprenticeship and grooming by Jobs, he would have a clearly articulated worldview by now. If he does, it does not show.

I'd really love to know what he's thinking about where it's all headed.

As to the stock rebounding in the past few days, I think the market was waiting to see whether and how (including the details of) the share repurchase. The fact that they boldly went ahead with a $17B debt issue (massively oversubscribed, incredibly low interest rates) to put their money where their mouth is probably the catalyst.

After a massive anticipatory run-up that took the stock to $705 and then the 40% drop, I think the market is waiting for Cook to actually deliver before rendering a judgment. He did, and it did.

Tim Cook can't and shouldn't get more specific about the future. What he gives out about "the mother of all markets," momentum in China, Apple's dominance of the mobile PC space, the disciplined thinking behind screen size choices, all that kind of stuff that he says is the plain truth, not platitudes.

Apple is riding three mature technologies, laptops, desktops and phones; one developing very visibly, the tablet; and one senescent, the iPod.

The next move from Apple is so important that he can't say a single word about it. This is not the time for him to lay out high concepts like Steve did when he was announcing a new category.

So, anantksundaram, what exactly do you want him to say?

Edit: Just for entertainment purposes around this point, here's a paragraph from The Motley Fool, linked to by Gruber today:

Quote:

Apple’s core business is deteriorating

As evidenced by Apple’s last earnings call, the company’s core business is deteriorating: growth is slowing and margins are compressing. Some investors may have seen Apple's loss as Samsung's gain, but that's a misrepresentation of the situation. Rather, the smartphone market is becoming more competitive every year, taking on the attributes typical of all commodity markets. In that case, no single handset maker -- including Apple itself -- will be able to generate the sort of profits Apple did in recent years.

Apple's core business is making new products that we didn't know we needed, such as the mother of all products, the iPad. That's about all Tim Cook can say, but you can see how important it is to keep all the idiots in the dark. They don't deserve a roadmap.Edited by Flaneur - 4/30/13 at 6:43pm

Did Jobs ever lay out a plan? I don't remember him doing that. Just releasing a major new product like iPod, iPhone, iPad and then telling you that all of history and everything they've built to date has led to its creation.

I don't expect, nor would I ask, Cook to lay out where the company is going or where shifts in the industry might lead Apple (living room, wearable, etc). Why would he respond?

I've decided that All Things D has to get rid of those red chairs, because I've decided that I don't like them. I am the decider.
They're very distracting, and kinda tacky. They should be replaced with identical reproductions of Captain James T. Kirk's bridge chair.

Tim Cook can't and shouldn't get more specific about the future. ......

Of course can't and shouldn't. That would be silly. Here's just a tiny example of what I mean. It's from SJ, at the 2007 ATD.

See if you can fast forward to 2013 and see how prescient he was (and I believe, his previewing the iPad without saying as much -- gives me goosebumps).

That's what I mean by "framework" and "vision."

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Walt: And here when you’re saying PC, you mean personal computer in general, not just Windows PCs?

Steve: I mean, personal computer in general.

Walt: Yeah, OK.

Steve: And, you know, there was the age of productivity, if you will, you know, the spreadsheets and word processors and that kind of got the whole industry moving. And it kind of plateaued for a while and was getting a little stale and then the Internet came along and everybody needed more powerful computers to get on the Internet, browsers came along, and it was this whole Internet age that came along, access to the Internet. And then some number of years ago, you could start to see that the PC that was taken for granted, things had kind of plateaued a little bit, innovation-wise, at least. And then I think this whole notion of the PC–we called it the digital hub, but you can call it anything you want, sort of the multimedia center of the house, started to take off with digital cameras and digital camcorders and sharing things over the Internet and kind of needing a repository for all that stuff and it was reborn again as sort of the hub of your digital life.

And you can sort of see that there’s something starting again. It’s not clear exactly what it is, but it will be the PC maybe used a little more tightly coupled with some back-end Internet services and some things like that. And, of course, PCs are going mobile in an ever greater degree.

So I think the PC is going to continue. This general purpose device is going to continue to be with us and morph with us, whether it’s a tablet or a notebook or, you know, a big curved desktop that you have at your house or whatever it might be. So I think that’ll be something that most people have, at least in this society. In others, maybe not, but certainly in this one.

But then there’s an explosion that’s starting to happen in what you call post-PC devices, right? You can call the iPod one of them. There’s a lot of things that are not…

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We all could go on with dozens and dozens of similar examples from SJ. The man thought about the why of his industry and the reason he got up to go to work.

I would love to see some more of that from Cook. What does he think about where it's all headed?

I know I'll take grief for saying this, but it must be said. It seems like, every time Cook has made public comments, the stock has dropped. Without any further clarity or insight provide about Apple and where it's headed (other than some standard platitudes).

Tim can't be blamed for the fact that even after all these years of silence they still expect him to reveal stuff before the official launch.

Let's leave the stock market out of this discussion. Besides, how do you explain that suddenly AAPL shares went up from $394 to $442 in just a few days? Wall street speculation, has got nothing to do with reality.

I see what you mean, but I wonder if Tim Cook thinks in terms of tectonic shifts like SJ did, who was basically a media ecologist, a Stewart Brand type who was into manufacturing. Tim Cook is more of a global materiel strategist, seems to me, which was exactly what Apple needed at the time he joined, and maybe exactly what they need now. SJ could not have done it without him, I imagine.

The framework and vision now has probably passed to Ive's crew, where it has to be kept under wraps until the next category is revealed. Another way of looking at it is that Jobs was speaking post iPhone when he was saying what you quoted. If the iPhone was still in the wings, he could have said none of that stuff without pulling the wraps off the surprise. There's a time to marshall your forces behind the lines, and a time to analyze the successful victory after the battle.

Edit: or was that post iPhone? I forget.Edited by Flaneur - 4/30/13 at 8:40pm

Cook is a logistics man Steve was a visionary. Two entirely different people and styles of leading. Apple will ne'er be quite the same again and people should accept this.

Why are you forcing people to accept your view? Only first part of your statement is correct. But later part - if Tim is not visionary, it is not necessary that Apple will not be able to create great products.

Tim Cook is rather boring to listen to. I understand he is very passionate about Apple but expect to hear the same "We have some great products in the pipeline" types of replies. Bill Gates is slightly better at speaking than Tim but no one will beat Steve Jobs at it. I learned a lot just from watching all the previous D talks he attended throughout the years.